5 ms·

What positive role do lobbyists play in government? Why aren’t they just straight up illegal everywhere?

by kgwxd 3y ago

thisgoesnowhere 3y ago
It's probably a good idea to get input from the people on the ground doing things. Lobbyists are not exactly that as currently formulatd, but they are supposed to be the way for companies to express their opinions. They have become pay to play by years and years of corruption and bribery.
- username332211 3y ago
  They have become? Has it ever been different? I remember seeing texts from the 70s or 80s where the thesis was that regulation is either lobbied for by industry (and thus serving it) or created in complete ignorance of the actual situation in the industry (which usually also benefits industry, because in a market economy other people's ignorance is usually profitable).
marchingkazoo 3y ago
In The States, it's an actual constitutional right. I won't try to justify how positive the role is or could be. However, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." A lobbyist's literal job is "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ysofunny 3y ago
  we gotta redraw the relationships between government, people, THE people, and business/corporations which behave like people but aren't actually individuals all as part of a renegiotiation of what "the public" actually means given that we have now digital internet, which forces a re-evaluation of what it evens means to "be in public" it's like there's two publics: digital (or cyber or virtual) and physical (in real world), but our laws are not aware of this??? dunno
  - notquitetrue 3y ago
    Say my friends and I own a business that will be affected by something Congress is considering. So we hire a lobbyist to go inform the politicians about that. How is that not people exercising their First Amendment rights? Our livelihood depends on what they do. It is a major part of my life. It seems like your view is that you are only “people” when you’re not engaged in economic production, that human beings only exist in leisure.
    - zmgsabst 3y ago
      There two situations: 1. You and your friends hire that lobbyist with your private funds. 2. The corporation as an entity hires the lobbyist. They’re saying the second should be illegal and it’s unclear how your personal rights are impacted by that.
      - notquitetrue 3y ago
        The corporation is the legal embodiment of our joint interests. It is the only reasonable place to put the lobbying efforts. The silly thing you propose would in fact be workable for a small number of owners like this hypothetical, but how would a public corporation with diffuse ownership engage with the government under this proposal? It’s really no different than a company defending itself in court. A legislative or regulatory proposal can be just as confiscatory or punitive, or have as many unexpected consequences, as a lawsuit. In both cases, the business needs to lawyer up and represent its interests.
        lucianbr 3y ago
        > The corporation is the legal embodiment of our joint interests. Would you stand by this statement when the corporation is caught doing some illegal evil thing, like denying employers their rights, or damaging the environment? Even if you would, most shareholders of large corporations don't. They suddenly discover being a shareholder is a very "at arms length" thing. Might work nicely if corporations were "the embodiment" at all times, or at no times. But selectively, it is quite bad.
NeoTar 3y ago
Here is a kinda-example of lobbyists being good. There was recently a law passed by the lower house (Bundestag) in Germany, reflecting EU law, that ride-on lawn-mowers and other low-speed vehicles needed to be insured when on public land. This law failed in the upper house (Bundesrat), and no reconciliation between the two was possible, so the law has ultimately failed to be implemented. Maybe not the only cause for the upper-house to reject the law, but insurance companies - i.e. the people who would benefit from providing this insurance - were actually against this law, and fought against it. I believe their argument was that it would be too expensive to roll-out, and there was an alternative fund which would be better used to provide for the very rare occasions when an insurance payout occurred. [I've used lower/upper house terminology, it's a little bit more complicated than that, and can't be directly mapped to the US/UK/AU system, but hopefully that expresses the idea of what happened]
- NeoTar 3y ago
  Here is an English language video which explains more if you are interested: https://youtu.be/1thxR9vU8FA?si=QFomY2q15Fl8687n https://youtu.be/1thxR9vU8FA?si=QFomY2q15Fl8687n
- Ajay-p 3y ago
  I got a better one. It was the lobbyists who fought for five years to enact the World Trade Center 9/11 Health Compensation Fund. It took FIVE years for congress to make that happen and no one was lobbying on behalf of the first responders.
  - ctack 3y ago
    It is a positive example but in a way it proves the opposite point doesn’t it? That a worthy cause got overlooked for 5 years because the lobbyists weren’t rich enough to buy their way more quickly…
  - inputError 3y ago
    [dead]
GardenLetter27 3y ago
Ideally to inform about the industry's view of legislation. Like parts of the EU's AI act and Cybersecurity act are terrible for FOSS and small start-ups. It'd be like if compilers had been regulated as dangerous, and GCC stopped to hand Intel a monopoly in the 80s. The bureaucrats often get it wrong, and are led astray (or bribed) by companies seeking regulatory capture (e.g. OpenAI and Microsoft). But in practice the biggest corporations have the most resources and lawyers, so it just serves as another means of pushing regulatory capture.
- zoobab 3y ago
  "EU's AI act and Cybersecurity act are terrible for FOSS and small start-ups" Add the Unified Patent Court to the list. Software patents through the backdoor, the President of the Court is already showing some love for EPO's practice, which they failed to copy/paste into law in 2002/2005.
sanarothe 3y ago
I have seen them called something like 'government affairs' - We have them in med device for various reasons. Current company is in market creation, so we have people on staff who build relationships and (ideally) change policy in VA, Medicare and other government health orgs, all as part of the fight against insurance non-authorization & non-coverage. US health insurance is evil and needs fixing, so in this case I think it is a positive. Last company, megacorp, has a full-time guy in Brussels who does regulatory intelligence and represents the company in the legislative process. I think EU MDR, the 2017 European medical device regulation, indicates there is probably some value in having meaningful input from the giant corporations in the relevant sector being regulated. The burden on med device manufacturers to get market access to the EU has become very high - the enforcement date of the regulation has been pushed back year after year because it's taking forever for companies to overhaul their technical documentation for this regulation (no grandfathering clause, everything state of the art), and taking forever to get review by notified bodies (not enough notified bodies, TON to review for every device family). The result is that there are just fewer devices on the market. Companies are looking at their volumes vs the effort EU wants to maintain market access for something that's been available since 1985 and the choice is an obvious nope. It seems like the regulation was created in a bit of a bubble. Perhaps if there were more stakeholders at the table who could say "Um this is a ridiculous hurdle and I'm going to drop from the market if you implement this" or "We don't want to be a notified for body EU MDR, the burden is just too high and costs don't work out"... maybe we wouldn't be in this absolute fi-esta. (Source on market availability - https://www.medtecheurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/medtech-europe-survey-report-analysing-the-availability-of-medical-devices-in-2022-in-connection-to-the-medical-device-regulation-mdr-implementation.pdf https://www.medtecheurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/med...)
PeterisP 3y ago
In general, the government wants to hear the opinions of various industries or interest groups when discussing things that affect them. Furthermore, if the politicians have decided that they want to implement a certain change, the details of that change need input from that industry or interest group. For example, some representatives may have a general political position that they want to protect local industry from overseas competition with worse standards. There is a valuable role for a lobbyist to come and say "hey, you have taken measures for the steel industry and honey imports, but what about us, the widget industry as represented by ACME inc. also is relevant your goals!" - and if the representative agrees that this should be done, it makes sense for them to ask the lobbyist / the industry to make an exact proposal to how different types of widgets should be defined/distinguished in that new law, instead of having it be written by some staff paralegal who doesn't understand what the industry is about and what those terms mean.
alkonaut 3y ago
Well, it's good to get information from business. The problem is, when you allow this type of lobbyism the information will be delivered by the entities that can afford it. And businesses don't have votes, voters do. Allowing business to too strongly influence politics risks making laws that voters don't approve of, but business do. It's lazy politics. In the US where money is a driver for individuals (because campaigns paid with personal "campaign funds" are a big thing) it's even worse. There you could have people who owe business favors on day 1, because that's how they got their seat to begin with and if they want to keep they better fulfil their promises.
geodel 3y ago
What positive role lawyers play, social media play, instagram influencers play ... in society. Why aren't they illegal everywhere?

What positive role do lobbyists play in government? Why aren’t they just straight up illegal everywhere?

by kgwxd 3y ago

What positive role do lobbyists play in government? Why aren’t they just straight up illegal everywhere?

It's probably a good idea to get input from the people on the ground doing things. Lobbyists are not exactly that as currently formulatd, but they are supposed to be the way for companies to express their opinions. They have become pay to play by years and years of corruption and bribery.

username332211 3y ago
They have become? Has it ever been different? I remember seeing texts from the 70s or 80s where the thesis was that regulation is either lobbied for by industry (and thus serving it) or created in complete ignorance of the actual situation in the industry (which usually also benefits industry, because in a market economy other people's ignorance is usually profitable).

marchingkazoo 3y ago

In The States, it's an actual constitutional right. I won't try to justify how positive the role is or could be. However, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." A lobbyist's literal job is "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ysofunny 3y ago
we gotta redraw the relationships between government, people, THE people, and business/corporations which behave like people but aren't actually individuals all as part of a renegiotiation of what "the public" actually means given that we have now digital internet, which forces a re-evaluation of what it evens means to "be in public" it's like there's two publics: digital (or cyber or virtual) and physical (in real world), but our laws are not aware of this??? dunno
- notquitetrue 3y ago
  Say my friends and I own a business that will be affected by something Congress is considering. So we hire a lobbyist to go inform the politicians about that. How is that not people exercising their First Amendment rights? Our livelihood depends on what they do. It is a major part of my life. It seems like your view is that you are only “people” when you’re not engaged in economic production, that human beings only exist in leisure.
  - zmgsabst 3y ago
    There two situations: 1. You and your friends hire that lobbyist with your private funds. 2. The corporation as an entity hires the lobbyist. They’re saying the second should be illegal and it’s unclear how your personal rights are impacted by that.
    - notquitetrue 3y ago
      The corporation is the legal embodiment of our joint interests. It is the only reasonable place to put the lobbying efforts. The silly thing you propose would in fact be workable for a small number of owners like this hypothetical, but how would a public corporation with diffuse ownership engage with the government under this proposal? It’s really no different than a company defending itself in court. A legislative or regulatory proposal can be just as confiscatory or punitive, or have as many unexpected consequences, as a lawsuit. In both cases, the business needs to lawyer up and represent its interests.
      - lucianbr 3y ago
        > The corporation is the legal embodiment of our joint interests. Would you stand by this statement when the corporation is caught doing some illegal evil thing, like denying employers their rights, or damaging the environment? Even if you would, most shareholders of large corporations don't. They suddenly discover being a shareholder is a very "at arms length" thing. Might work nicely if corporations were "the embodiment" at all times, or at no times. But selectively, it is quite bad.

NeoTar 3y ago

Here is a kinda-example of lobbyists being good. There was recently a law passed by the lower house (Bundestag) in Germany, reflecting EU law, that ride-on lawn-mowers and other low-speed vehicles needed to be insured when on public land. This law failed in the upper house (Bundesrat), and no reconciliation between the two was possible, so the law has ultimately failed to be implemented. Maybe not the only cause for the upper-house to reject the law, but insurance companies - i.e. the people who would benefit from providing this insurance - were actually against this law, and fought against it. I believe their argument was that it would be too expensive to roll-out, and there was an alternative fund which would be better used to provide for the very rare occasions when an insurance payout occurred. [I've used lower/upper house terminology, it's a little bit more complicated than that, and can't be directly mapped to the US/UK/AU system, but hopefully that expresses the idea of what happened]

NeoTar 3y ago
Here is an English language video which explains more if you are interested: https://youtu.be/1thxR9vU8FA?si=QFomY2q15Fl8687n https://youtu.be/1thxR9vU8FA?si=QFomY2q15Fl8687n
Ajay-p 3y ago
I got a better one. It was the lobbyists who fought for five years to enact the World Trade Center 9/11 Health Compensation Fund. It took FIVE years for congress to make that happen and no one was lobbying on behalf of the first responders.
- ctack 3y ago
  It is a positive example but in a way it proves the opposite point doesn’t it? That a worthy cause got overlooked for 5 years because the lobbyists weren’t rich enough to buy their way more quickly…
- inputError 3y ago
  [dead]

GardenLetter27 3y ago

Ideally to inform about the industry's view of legislation. Like parts of the EU's AI act and Cybersecurity act are terrible for FOSS and small start-ups. It'd be like if compilers had been regulated as dangerous, and GCC stopped to hand Intel a monopoly in the 80s. The bureaucrats often get it wrong, and are led astray (or bribed) by companies seeking regulatory capture (e.g. OpenAI and Microsoft). But in practice the biggest corporations have the most resources and lawyers, so it just serves as another means of pushing regulatory capture.

zoobab 3y ago
"EU's AI act and Cybersecurity act are terrible for FOSS and small start-ups" Add the Unified Patent Court to the list. Software patents through the backdoor, the President of the Court is already showing some love for EPO's practice, which they failed to copy/paste into law in 2002/2005.

sanarothe 3y ago

I have seen them called something like 'government affairs' - We have them in med device for various reasons. Current company is in market creation, so we have people on staff who build relationships and (ideally) change policy in VA, Medicare and other government health orgs, all as part of the fight against insurance non-authorization & non-coverage. US health insurance is evil and needs fixing, so in this case I think it is a positive. Last company, megacorp, has a full-time guy in Brussels who does regulatory intelligence and represents the company in the legislative process. I think EU MDR, the 2017 European medical device regulation, indicates there is probably some value in having meaningful input from the giant corporations in the relevant sector being regulated. The burden on med device manufacturers to get market access to the EU has become very high - the enforcement date of the regulation has been pushed back year after year because it's taking forever for companies to overhaul their technical documentation for this regulation (no grandfathering clause, everything state of the art), and taking forever to get review by notified bodies (not enough notified bodies, TON to review for every device family). The result is that there are just fewer devices on the market. Companies are looking at their volumes vs the effort EU wants to maintain market access for something that's been available since 1985 and the choice is an obvious nope. It seems like the regulation was created in a bit of a bubble. Perhaps if there were more stakeholders at the table who could say "Um this is a ridiculous hurdle and I'm going to drop from the market if you implement this" or "We don't want to be a notified for body EU MDR, the burden is just too high and costs don't work out"... maybe we wouldn't be in this absolute fi-esta. (Source on market availability - https://www.medtecheurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/medtech-europe-survey-report-analysing-the-availability-of-medical-devices-in-2022-in-connection-to-the-medical-device-regulation-mdr-implementation.pdf https://www.medtecheurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/med...)

PeterisP 3y ago

In general, the government wants to hear the opinions of various industries or interest groups when discussing things that affect them. Furthermore, if the politicians have decided that they want to implement a certain change, the details of that change need input from that industry or interest group. For example, some representatives may have a general political position that they want to protect local industry from overseas competition with worse standards. There is a valuable role for a lobbyist to come and say "hey, you have taken measures for the steel industry and honey imports, but what about us, the widget industry as represented by ACME inc. also is relevant your goals!" - and if the representative agrees that this should be done, it makes sense for them to ask the lobbyist / the industry to make an exact proposal to how different types of widgets should be defined/distinguished in that new law, instead of having it be written by some staff paralegal who doesn't understand what the industry is about and what those terms mean.

alkonaut 3y ago

Well, it's good to get information from business. The problem is, when you allow this type of lobbyism the information will be delivered by the entities that can afford it. And businesses don't have votes, voters do. Allowing business to too strongly influence politics risks making laws that voters don't approve of, but business do. It's lazy politics. In the US where money is a driver for individuals (because campaigns paid with personal "campaign funds" are a big thing) it's even worse. There you could have people who owe business favors on day 1, because that's how they got their seat to begin with and if they want to keep they better fulfil their promises.

geodel 3y ago

What positive role lawyers play, social media play, instagram influencers play ... in society. Why aren't they illegal everywhere?